Georgia: OSCE Calls Timeout while Wrestling with Russia's Ossetia Conundrum
OSCE officials are taking a step back in order to move forward with talks aimed at keeping an observer mission in Georgia. Despite loud denials by Russian diplomats, Western states identify the Kremlin as the key obstacle to an agreement.
On May 14, the Vienna-based OSCE on May 14 said negotiations on the future of its Georgian field operations would be suspended until further notice. "Following five months of intensive informal negotiations, it is now time to take stock of what has been accomplished," Greek Ambassador Mara Marinaki said in a statement issued after a session of the Permanent Council, the OSCE's main regular decision-making body. Greece currently holds the OSCE's rotating chairmanship.
Taking a pause in the talks "was the only way to save the negotiation process," a Western official familiar with the consultations commented to EuriasiaNet, adding that a number of nations which strongly oppose Russia's stance on the issue were in favor of simply terminating the talks. According to this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, consultations among the organization's 56 participating states are expected to continue in a bid to reach a consensual agreement by June 30, when the mandate of the OSCE's Georgia monitoring operations expires.
"Despite the suspension of the talks, we remain hopeful that we will still be able to reach consensus soon," an OSCE statement quoted Marinaki as saying.
The fate of the OSCE's Georgian field operations has been uncertain since the short war that pitted Georgia against Russia over the separatist republic of South Ossetia in August of last year. The hostilities resulted in Tbilisi's crushing military defeat and Russia's occupation of large chunks of Georgian lands adjacent to South Ossetia.
In the wake of the conflict, Moscow recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgia's two separatist republics. It also announced plans to set up military bases in both breakaway provinces. Russia earlier this month started deploying border guards between South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the rest of Georgia.
Prior to August 2008, the OSCE mission to Georgia consisted of a main office in Tbilisi and a smaller, subordinated field representation in South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali, which served as a base for eight unarmed OSCE military monitoring officers (MMOs) mandated to verify the implementation of the 1992 Georgian-South Ossetian ceasefire agreement. After the war an additional 20 OSCE MMOs were deployed to areas adjacent to South Ossetia with a distinct mandate.
Claiming that "new realities on the ground" required a reassessment of the OSCE's presence in the region, Russia last year said it would not routinely extend the mandate of the OSCE mission to Georgia for another 12 months, and suggested instead that the Tskhinvali office be separated from the Tbilisi headquarters and that its status be upgraded to that of a fully-fledged mission. Other OSCE participating states rejected Russia's proposal.
Talks entered a deadlock and, in late December of 2008, Finland - which then held the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE - announced the imminent termination of the organization's mission to Georgia. At present, the mission officially remains in a state of "technical closure."
Meanwhile, negotiations resumed under the Greek chairmanship. In February, Russia agreed to extend the mandate of the 20 MMOs deployed after the war until June 30. The mandate of the other eight military monitors, which is tied up to that of the OSCE mission to Georgia, remains in limbo.
In a surprise move, Moscow in early March dropped its demand that a fully-fledged OSCE mission to Tskhinvali be set up. Greece then drafted two new proposals -- one on the field office, one on monitoring operations -- and circulated them among participating states. Formal talks among representatives of the OSCE participating states took place in Vienna on May 12-13 to discuss Russian amendments to the Greek drafts.
Sources close to the negotiations told EurasiaNet the latest proposals tabled by the Greek chairmanship envisioned the creation of an "OSCE office in Tbilisi" and the deployment of 30 MMOs in the August conflict zone, on both sides of the internationally unrecognized Georgian-South Ossetian border. Twenty-two MMOs would be deployed in the Georgian town of Karaleti, while the remaining eight would be based in Tskhinvali.
If everyone seems to agree on those basic principles, strong disagreements remain on the guidelines for monitoring operations.
Russia insists that the two groups of OSCE monitors be mutually independent, something that the United States and European Union nations oppose, arguing that such an arrangement would be tantamount to recognizing South Ossetia's de facto independence. Those nations, including the Greek chairmanship, want both monitoring operations to be placed under a single command that would report directly to Vienna.
Against Western demands that the OSCE monitors be allowed to move freely within their respective areas of responsibilities and across the de facto border, Russia asserts that guidelines should be developed with South Ossetia's consent. Also, Moscow says the monitoring operation on the South Ossetian side of the unrecognized border should be manned not with unarmed military officers, but with civilians.
Anvar Azimov, Russia's Ambassador to the OSCE, has so far indicated no willingness to compromise on those issues. "We never forced anyone to indirectly recognize South Ossetia by accepting the mandate of the [OSCE] monitors, but one should not try to force us to indirectly reverse our decision to recognize [South Ossetia]," Russia's RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying on May 13.
"The arrangement our main partners are proposing, which is based on the wrong assumption that nothing changed in the region after the [August 7] Georgian aggression [against Tskhinvali], does not reflect the new realities of international law and politics and will simply not be viable, first of all because the South Ossetians will not accept it," Azimov added.
South Ossetia's de facto foreign minister Murat Dzhioyev moved quickly on May 13 to substantiate Azimov's claim. "Any decision made without taking South Ossetia's opinion into account will be unacceptable to us," Dzhioyev told South Ossetia's Res news agency.
Jean-Christophe Peuch is a Vienna-based freelance correspondent, who specializes in Caucasus- and Central Asia-related developments.
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